The Osage have this lovely phrase: 'Travelers in the Mist.' It was the term for part of an Osage clan that would take the lead whenever the tribe was venturing into unfamiliar realms. And, in a way, we are all travelers in the mist. The challenge is that, as writers, we sometimes want to ignore this murkiness, or we want to write around it.
David Grann
The way we live history is not the way historians tell history. Our lives are messy and chaotic and bewildering.
You want the story to be about something, have some deeper meaning, but there is also an emotional, almost instinctual, element, which is, does this story seize some part of you and compel you to get to the bottom of it?
My night stand is more like a geological structure: a bunch of books piled on the floor with its own strata.
I often feel that with a crime story, the moral standards have to be higher. You're deal with real victims and with real consequences.
Journalists are often portrayed as cynical. I often think it's the opposite.
I don't hunt, I don't camp, and I get lost on my subway to work here in Times Square!
I really just choose stories that are compelling, have interesting trends and characters, and hopefully say something larger about society.
The only thing as murky as a conspiracy is what's happening in Hollywood.
A lot of the stories I write about have an element of mystery. They're crime stories or conspiracy stories or quests. They do have built into them revelations and twists. But the revelations, to me, come from seeing history as it's unfolding, or life as it's unfolding.
The biggest difference with Twitter and writing long form is you're part of a virtual community where you know people, or think you know them, through their links.
Books were a huge part of my childhood growing up. We would go on vacation, and my mom was always carting manuscripts around.
I don't cry too often reading books, but I did reading Francisco Goldman's autobiographical novel, 'Say Her Name.'
It took me a long time to be able to write for the 'New Yorker,' and for me, that has been the best job. I live a very conventional life, but reporting for the magazine has allowed me to do things I would never otherwise do, such as investigating a criminal conspiracy in Guatemala or trekking through the Amazon looking for a lost city.
I think you get into trouble as an author and a journalist when, rather than owning the gaps, you try to elide them.
There are some incredibly gifted writers in the world. You can count them on a hand. They're blessed, and they've worked at their craft, but there's very few.
Barry Bonds was still young when his father's fall began. Although Bobby still continued to put up good numbers year after year, he never lived up to expectations.
Most of Gingrich's moderate positions are rooted in a realpolitik that transcends ideology.
Heroes have always served as a reflection of their times, a template of who we are and what we want to be.
I am not, by nature, an explorer or an adventurer.
One of the things I believe strongly in is developing institutions - legal, press, bureaucracies, academies - that are rooted in the pursuit of impartial truth. That aren't simply just bent to partisan ends or are corrupted for the powerful or for other ulterior motives.
My mother doesn't need much sleep. At any hour of the night, you'd wake up, and she'd be reading. She'd read five, six books a week. When we went on sailing trips, she'd bring a suitcaseful for the week. Even then, her office would have to send more.
The amazing thing about the sea is that it is perhaps the last truly unexplored frontier; most oceanographers estimate that only about ninety-five per cent of the sea has been studied. Meanwhile, the oceans are believed to contain more animals than exist on land, a majority of which have never been discovered.
The giant squid is the perfect embodiment of a sea monster: it is huge, it has tentacles, it has big eyes, and it is absolutely frightening-looking. But, most important, it is real. Unlike the Loch Ness monster, we know it's out there.
You think of the rainforest as this incredibly abundant place of fauna and animals and flora. This great, rich wilderness. And yet it is such a biological battlefield in which everything is competing.
The outlaw, in the American imagination, is a subject of romance - a 'good' bad man, he is typically a master of escape, a crack shot, a ladies' man.
I often say that the best way to find a story is a one-inch brief in a local newspaper.
The political hero is not like the sports champion or matinee idol or daring inventor; like the war hero, he is born only of tragedy.
In Brazil, the history of the interaction between blancos and indios - whites and Indians - often reads like an extended epitaph. Tribes were wiped out by disease and massacres; languages and songs were obliterated.
Because many squid have brain nerve fibres that are hundreds of times thicker than those of humans, neuroscientists have long used them for research. These nerve fibres have led to so many breakthroughs in the study of neurons that many scientists joke that the squid should receive a Nobel Prize.
I was a schoolteacher; I taught seventh and eighth grade, and I tried to write fiction on the side.
If I can find the right idea, I can get out of the way and do a good story.
There was a part of me that always wanted to be an editor.
Although baseball actually began as a game played largely by urban toughs, its image was soon reconstructed to mirror the country's pastoral myth.
Like many people, I kicked around, struggled to become a writer, finally got my first full-time job around 27, 28, at 'The Hill' newspaper. They hired me as a copy editor, which was kind of funny because I'm semi-blind because I have an eye disorder.
A lot of the stuff I tweet is out of childlike curiosity.
I've done a lot of stories over the years, and sometimes there are larks, and they're fun, and you kind of move on.
I wish a book could reach as many people as film, but we have to be realistic about it.
One of the nice things about 'The New Yorker' is they let you write stories that sometimes end up almost half a book.
Memory is a code to who we are, a collection of not just dates and facts but also of epic emotional struggles, epiphanies, transformations.
Honestly, I had no idea what to do on Twitter when I started. I didn't follow it enough. Slowly, though, I started to realize what I'm okay at. Like, I'm just not particularly witty.
I'm kind of odd; I'm a technophobe who isn't a technophobe. I'm afraid of new things, but eventually I love them. That happened with Twitter.
When I work on stories, I tend to be pretty obsessive.
It's funny: I don't know if she babysat, but I spent time with Judy Blume when I was little.
I grew up around writers, and there was always a romance to them. They were charming. They would tell their stories of what they were working on, over the table.
For a while, when I got out of college, I tried to write fiction. I'd grown up more around novelists, and my initial attraction was to write fiction. But I was much less suited for it. I always struggled to figure out what people were saying or doing in a particular moment.
I had many different careers early on. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But, like so many people, I didn't know how to be one - other than just do it. I didn't know what form it would take.
Early on, I tried fiction, but I wasn't very good at it. I wrote a very bad novel that is thankfully sitting in a drawer somewhere.
When I work on stories, I tend to lose sight of everything else. I forget to pay bills or to shave. I don't change my clothes as often as I should.
I don't camp; I don't hike. I hate bugs, and I'm phobic of snakes.
